The good and the bad, plus another RB option

A brief flurry of news in Seahawks land has got me smiling and wincing simultaneously. It’s not a good look, I must say.

The Hawks signed RT Sean Locklear to a 5-year contract, reported to be worth $32 million. This is great news. Locklear is a solid RT, who is probably our best option to replace Walter Jones when he leaves in a year or two. It would have thrown our line into disarray if we lost him. I don’t think he had a fantastic season, but we can’t afford to re-shape our entire line and hope to win big next year.

The bad news was the Hawks applying the franchise tag to Marcus Trufant. It wasn’t that I disagreed with the move, but we really need a lower cap number for him to allow us to snap up other free agents like Alge Crumpler. I certainly believe the Hawks will sign Tru to a long-term deal. The question becomes, “When?”

Lastly, the Carolina Panthers dumped RB DeShaun Foster in a salary cap move yesterday. Foster is not as good of a fit as Warrick Dunn might be, but he’s 28, and has shown flashes of being a premiere runner. He would certainly be an upgrade over Mo Morris.

7 Responses

I think the only way Tru gets a multi-year deal is if Alexander’s contract is restructured, or if he’s cut outright. That’s the decision point for the organization right now.

Lots of players routinely do this for their organizations, and Shaun’s got to look at his situation. He’s underperformed his contract for the last two years. Showing some initiative here would benefit the organization and restore some good will with the fans.

An outside chance the Hawks start the season without Hackett and with Branch on IR. Ouch….Bobby Engrams not getting any younger either. I would have thought that getting Hackett signed to a multi-year deal would have been a priority for the Hawks. Is it a cap issue, or perfomance?

A tale of two players…..

Anybody care to guess what Wistrom’s cap number is for 2008, two years after he last played? $4.6 million…he refused to restructure and was released. Dead money.

Burleson restructured earlier this year. The Hawks trimmed the backloaded years off the contract and gave him base salaries of $3.25M for 08, 09, and a voidable year in 2010.

I tried to second source Alexander’s contract numbers, but the trib had archived the earlier stuff. What I did find, was references to base salaries of $7,350,000 for 2008, and $8,437,000 for 2009. That’s the NFL equivalent of Nasdaq 5000, imo. It’s simply not sustainable, given that other young players like Tatupu and Hill will be coming off 4 and 5 year rookie contracts. The Trufant contract situation basically front loads a cap number this year if nothing is done.

That’s the thing with managing the cap…your’e really looking at 2009 and beyond in this case.

Frank Hughes now reporting that Alexanders salary for 2008 is $4,475,000, not the 7 million figure I cited earlier. Maybe that was a cap number if he was cut with the signing bonus prorated? Either way, it seems moot now.

The bigger issue is that Brown has moved on to greener pastures….too bad they weren’t able to get a deal done. That guy was money.